I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Morning. It's very quiet in Berkeley yesterday and today. Just maybe everybody's gone away except us. But it's a really wonderful atmosphere in which to do this session in the city. So here we are in the middle, more or less, of the second day. It's very quiet and steady. I think that most of us have walked through the gate that marks the boundary of our usual life and our experience of Seshin. And so we left the mess and the tumult of everyday life behind.

[01:13]

And then we find ourselves having entered the mess and the tumult of our minds of this territory. where all the habits of our minds and body stand out in very clear relief. It's a funny word, relief. It's actually, you know, some it's a relief and some it's just not a relief at all. It's just stark. So in Zazen, we can taste the and sense the qualities of this mindful awareness and concentration that we're trying to give rise to. And we also are very clearly encountering the distractions, the pitfalls of distractions that are all around us.

[02:25]

When we fall in, get muddy, pull ourselves out over and over again. That's really good. So let's all keep at it. For the last month or more, Sojan has been teaching us Abhidharma. going through the hundred dharmas from Vasubandhu, right? And it's actually pretty unusual. You know, many Zen centers and Zen traditions, they wouldn't be looking at this stuff. They might find that a distraction. But in our tradition, We've been studying it for a long time in one form or another.

[03:30]

I remember pretty clearly when I first came here a long time ago. Mel was lecturing on some of what I want to talk about today. He was lecturing, I remember lectures on the seven factors of enlightenment and the five hindrances and periodically he will revisit this territory of basic Buddhism. I just think it's really important for us to understand that grounding for the Dharma And it also represents, I think, what's evolving in Suzuki Roshi's tradition. It's another way of including everything instead of focusing in. on one particular practice, one particular way of sitting or using your mind, we incorporate all the tools that we can in order to help us.

[04:41]

So today I wanted to continue with a discussion of the mechanics of our mind. I've been thinking, this sort of got set off for me. I read an essay by the novelist Saul Bellow on distraction and how hard it was for him as a writer to kind of weigh in against the distractions of our age. And it just made me think, how do I frame this notion of distraction? And I realized that it pairs up in my mind with practice of concentration. And yet there's ways of thinking about concentration that I'd like to explore with you.

[05:46]

So I'd like to talk about both of these. First, maybe some rough definitions. Concentration, the root, is in centering with, or as in concentric, concentric circles. Concentric circles have a common center. So it's an interesting thing to think about our practice of concentration. It's finding the common center with whatever we are focusing on or focusing with. We're not focusing on it, we're focusing with it. We're finding that place of commonality. And distraction,

[06:50]

means to draw in different directions or to move towards another object or to stir up or confuse with conflicting emotions or motivations. So, we'll come back to to these definitions and these ways of thinking and see how they apply, how are they useful. Looking at, I'd give a quick look, not in any way a deep study of Vasubandhu's Hundred Dharmas, I borrowed Mel's copy yesterday, to see where these factors are included. And concentration is there as a dharma.

[07:54]

Concentration or samadhi is the fourth of the five particular states. It's a dharma that's interactive with the mind. And the cultivation of these five particular states allows one to, allows one not to give rise to thoughts of good or evil, thoughts that create karma. So concentration means to pay attention to something and to be without distractions. Distraction is actually its own, its own dharma. And it is one of the eight major grade afflictions. So watch out. It's another way, and Master Hwa says, it's another way to enter the never never land.

[09:05]

And it invariably leads to unwholesome thinking. So, you know, there's big road signs by that particular pitfall. So it figures, you know, in that system that Mel's been teaching us, concentration is also key in several other systems of Dharma. It's the eighth Samadhi or concentration is the eighth step of the Noble Eightfold Path. It is the sixth of seven of the factors or wings or limbs of enlightenment which are, just to go over, just mindfulness, investigation of the dharmas, energy, rapture or joy, calmness, concentrations, and equanimity.

[10:09]

So concentration is something that we need, something that we use, something that's included in our awakening. And it's also pretty closely identified with the paramita of jhana or meditation in that samadhi or concentration. leads directly to the realization of these jhanas. The jhanas are meditative absorptions that give rise to joy, clarity of mind, equanimity, and ultimately to awakening. And in in Theravada systems you see that actually in the description of the Buddha's enlightenment there's a description of him moving through each of those jhanas so step by step until he has a full awakening and jhana is also

[11:21]

that word got translated in Chinese as Chan, and then into Japanese as Zen. So it's very close to the essence of our practice. But as I mentioned, distraction is also a dharma, and it's a really powerful one, as I imagine we know when we experience. In a traditional interpretation of the seven factors of enlightenment, five hindrances are seen as the barrier to concentration. These five hindrances are lust, ill will, sloth or torpor, restlessness and worry, and skeptical doubt. I think that these hindrances boil down to distraction. you could include them all as distractions.

[12:27]

If you look at them as leading to unwholesome states of mind, it makes a lot of sense. Each of them leads away, distracts from presence, from just being with our intention and from however we construe concentration. So distraction is another way of speaking about dukkha or suffering. It's really our habitual mind as we encounter throughout the day. And it's also the sickness of our age. You know, we call this sometimes the information age, but you could also call it the distraction age.

[13:28]

The information, really there's no more information out there than was ever available to any human being, but we've put such an emphasis on certain kinds of information. that it distracts us from looking at essences. You know, one day's issue of the New York Times contains more information than a contemporary, an educated, highly educated contemporary of Shakespeare would encounter in their entire life. Now, information of a certain kind. Everything else, they're processing just like us. And there's a real question, do we need that information? Does it really help us?

[14:32]

And yet it's compelling, the creation of all this information. What I notice is my inability to process it makes me feel inadequate. So it causes suffering. I feel like you should be able to take everything in. Well, you can't. Your mind just fills up. There's only so much that can be encompassed. It's also true that the enormities and terrible events of our times are so vast and so unthinkable that our minds can hardly grasp them, much less know what to do, which leaves us emotionally and intellectually, it can leave us emotionally and intellectually drained or weakened.

[15:41]

So it's not surprising that we turn towards distractions. It's easier to do that than to stay on point and see our own heart and find the difficult way of looking at the world and our responsibilities to it. So we turn towards distraction and we are strongly encouraged to crave excitement of all kinds. This comes through the media. It comes in every way. I don't have to enumerate it. We all experience it and know. And even the best of us is sometimes eager to turn in that direction towards those excitements.

[16:55]

So simply put, distraction is an expression of our disorderly or slippery consciousness. And we can see this, I can see it anyway. Maybe you all are more accomplished, but I can see it in my Zazen all the time. Now, it's true, actually, some of you, actually, I mean, because I speak with you, some people have a facility, you know, they have an affinity with concentration. And so it may be a little easier. This has actually never been my gift. And I suspect that a facility with it never will. It's just, you know, the way one's mind turns, you know, the qualities that are natural or that come with conditioning or with karma.

[18:10]

But that's okay. It doesn't bother me anymore. It used to bother me. You know, I used to think, I'm never going to be a good Zen student. And now I just think, well, I'm never going to be a good Zen student. It's OK. But I'm just going to keep doing it as best I can. But it's really amazing. You know, I set an intention of following my breath and maintaining an upright posture. And in the next moment, my mind just slips away, listening or thinking and so on. It's very mysterious. Last night, you know, when we eat in the evening, we only use two bowls. And the priests, we're not supposed to use our Buddha bowls, so we wrap it up and put it by the side and put out our little mat and put the two bowls out on it.

[19:17]

And I had the very clear thought, mindful thought, dinner, two bowls, and I can't Then I got to thinking something about the bowl or the shape of the bowl. And in the next moment, when we were putting out our bowls, I unwrapped it, I unwrapped my cloth, I folded it under. This was like maybe five seconds later. Five seconds later, I was distracted by my own thought. I caught it, you know, put it away, and was amused, essentially. I tend not to judge myself about these things. I also noticed it a couple weeks ago. I was Doan, I guess it was last month, for the Bodhisattva ceremony. And there are a lot of bells to ring and clunks to sound and ca-cheese.

[20:22]

And I hadn't done it for a long time. And I enjoy doing it. And I was going along and the bells were ringing, everything was clicking along, the chanting sounded really good, and I had the thought, oh, this is going pretty good, I still know how to do this. Then I missed it. As soon as my thought went to something else, I lost that concentration and I missed the bell. And again, I found that amusing and instructive. How easy it is, you know, and how ordinary it is for our minds to just turn away. I'm also thinking when I went up to... I've been going to Sishin with Shodo Harada Roshi in Washington.

[21:30]

and, um, uh, go to dokasan usually once or twice a day. And it's pretty short and very intense. Uh, basically, you know, some people are working on koans, which I'm not, but you are asked, he won't say anything. You, you are expected to present yourself, present your mind there in this darkened room. And, What I found, you know, I walked in, it was like, it was I think the second time, the second or third time I'd been, I'd already, I wasn't nervous, you know, the first time I was nervous, you know, but the second or third time I wasn't, I felt comfortable and he was just looking at me very intently and

[22:32]

I felt that the proper presentation was to look right back at him. Which may not actually be the Japanese way. I think the Japanese way would probably look down. But to look right back at him. And I couldn't do it. My eye would go there and I just would slip away. And I'd bring it back and it would slip away. And I just found that astonishing how difficult that was to stay there with another human being. But actually, it is difficult to be exposed, to know or sense this person is seeing you and for you to see back, which is a really deep exchange. And I just, again, I found that tremendously instructive, like how My habit mind, even when I'm doing something that I might enjoy, just turns away for some mysterious reason.

[23:47]

I might be enjoying myself, I might be calm. So this force of distraction, I find it very powerful. and very useful and contemplating. So we come back to the notion of concentration. In many schools of Buddhist meditation and other meditation they encourage a very strong, focused concentration. Like if you're doing a jhana meditation, you want to stay really focused. If you're doing certain kinds of Tibetan meditation, you're visualizing something and just really staying with that image. Other meditations, you know, you would be, you'd be looking at a lit candle and just having this completely one-pointed

[24:57]

concentration that stays on that point and keeps everything else out. And when you do that, I mean I think that the thinking in that is as you're doing that it leads to particular states of mind that are helpful and freeing and can really lead to your awakening. But this Soto Zen that we have from Dogen and from Suzuki Roshi and from Sojin is a little different. And in its largeness, it's difficult. Suzuki Roshi speaks about concentration.

[26:02]

He actually speaks about concentration sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, sort of weaving through Zen mind, beginner's mind, but you notice there's never actually a chapter on concentration, as there might be, say, if some Rinzai teacher were writing the book. But he talks about it pretty early in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. We say concentration, but to concentrate your mind on something is not the true purpose of Zen. The true purpose is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. This is to put everything under control in its widest sense.

[27:06]

Zen practice is to open up your small mind. So concentrating is just an aid to help you realize big mind or the mind that is everything. But then he goes on to talk about concentration. If you want to discover the true meaning of Zen in your everyday life, you have to understand the meaning of keeping your mind on your breathing and your body in the right posture in Zazen. You should follow the rules of practice and your study should become more subtle and careful. Only in this way can you experience the vital freedom of Zen. The way I think of it, The way we're learning is that we're taught to include the whole world in our zazen, which calls for a very open, flexible, receptive mind and an emphasis on

[28:08]

mindfulness of our body, our posture, our breath, our thoughts and feelings. So I think the message is just concentrate on everything at once. You know, how can you possibly do that? Just concentrate on everything really big, really open. This is, it's really, it's really a challenge. So technically, Suzuki Rishi says, if you want to obtain perfect calmness in your zazen, you should not be very, be bothered by the various images you find in your mind. Let them come, let them go. then they will be under control. That's not usually what we think of as under control.

[29:12]

He said, but this policy is not so easy. It sounds easy, but it requires some special effort, which I think is partly the effort of concentration. How to make this kind of effort is a secret of practice. Suppose you are sitting under some extraordinary circumstances. If you try to calm your mind, you will be unable to sit. And if you try not to be disturbed, your effort will not be the right effort. The only effort here that will help you is to count your breathing or to concentrate on your inhaling and exhaling. So we do concentrate on that. And that's part of the training that we have to cultivate our concentration. We begin with our breath. And as I've said before, I think that each time you sit down, for each period of zazen, when you sit down, really put a little effort into your breath right at the beginning.

[30:27]

Take some deep breaths. Breathe in very fully. You can breathe in through your mouth, down to your hara. and then breathe out slowly and long and slowly. And when you get to the bottom of that breath, push a little more air out. And you can try that. Try that for, you know, for three, four, five breaths at the beginning of your zazen. And so you're not wasting time on the cushion. You're not kind of letting yourself slip into a period of zazen with all of your ordinary thoughts still churning away. And then you go to find the, you just allow yourself to find the natural rhythm of breathing. We also emphasize, put a strong emphasis on upright posture.

[31:32]

And that's another kind of concentration practice. It's being mindful of the body. but it's being mindful with an effort, with the notion that there is a form that we're trying to model for ourselves and for each other, which is quite upright. So we just readjust time and again. And that's where we practice concentration. And then with the comings and goings of our mind, how do we practice concentration with a flexible mind? I think that that means we focus on a sort of kindness in our receptivity, a kindness to our perceptions,

[32:37]

a mind that continually makes the effort to set aside all judgments and to treat our thoughts or feelings with what Dogen called Roshin or parental mind or parents mind that has some maybe not entirely comfortable resonances in our culture depending on how we think of our parents, but he meant it in a very kind caretaking way. So there's a tension that we feel in this. This is what makes it difficult. In a certain way it's easier to No, your job is to stay with your koan, or your job is to stay with just your breath as it passes the point of your nose in and out.

[33:42]

That's a very clear mission. Our mission is a lot, it's bigger than that, should you choose to accept it. So, We have a tension between this concentration and complete inclusion, including everything, not leaving anything out, having the whole world in our zazen. And we're constantly looking for a balance point. So we fall off and we get on. Or one, we veer away in distraction by our thoughts or perceptions. And then we come back. One way to think of it, how to work with your mind, how to work with your breath and posture is think of it like sort of a an automatic pilot on a boat or a plane.

[34:46]

I used to watch this when I was a kid. My grandparents had a boat. And it was always really amazing to me because, you know, it's like a wave would sort of push it over to the left and the steering wheel would actually turn. and it would turn it back to the center and it usually would overcorrect and would go off to the right and then steering will correct a little to the left. So this is, you know, this is a useful metaphor for what we do with our mind when it veers off in one direction or another with distraction, we keep bringing it back to center knowing that we are actually at sea. So we can't just stay there. We can't just stay in the center. And yet, Suzuki Roshi also talks about, a little later in the book, he talks about the Bodhisattva's single-minded way.

[35:47]

But it's not single-minded in the way of concentration. It's a track that we follow, and the track is our practice. And somehow I visualized that track maybe going all over the place, but we're staying on the track. So we keep bringing ourselves back and accepting the fact that we veer off. I'd like to close with a poem and then maybe leave a few minutes for discussion. This is a poem by Denise Levertov, wonderful poet, and it's called The Life of Others. Their high-pitched baying, as if in prayer's unison, remote, undistracted, given over utterly to belief, the skean of geese voyages south, hierarchic arrow of its convergence toward the point of grace, swinging and rippling, ribbon-tail of a kite, loftily over lakes where they have not elected to rest.

[36:59]

over men who suppose earth is man's, over golden earth preparing itself for night and winter. We humans are smaller than they and crawl unnoticed about and about the smoky map." Let me read that one more time. Their high-pitched baying, as if in prayer's unison, remote, undistracted, given over utterly to belief, the skean of geese voyages south, hierarchic arrow of its convergence, toward the point of grace, swinging and rippling, ribbon-tail of a kite, loftily over lakes where they have not elected to rest, over men who suppose earth is man's, over golden earth preparing itself for night and winter. We humans are smaller than they and crawl unnoticed about and about the smoky map.

[38:03]

Given over utterly to belief, each goose concentrates on holding its place in the V. And that tail, you know, it moves here and there in the air, but it holds its form. Each one holds its place in this line, and the leader concentrates on direction, sort of visualizing the goal, the point to which it wishes to arrive. And from time to time, the lead changes, and each person Each goose, rather, gets to take the lead. Each one of them is capable of leading at the right time when it's called upon. I read this poem in several ways, though. As in the title, The Life of Others, you know there's a distinction between these geese as animals and deluded humans like ourselves who think that the earth is man's but I think more usefully for me in the context of Zazen mind and Buddhist practice the whole thing is a model of our mind

[39:36]

There's this unruly part that's crawling about and about aimlessly about the smoky map. And there's the big mind, in this case our goose mind, which moves towards grace and in faith it knows precisely where it's going. The question is, can we integrate this? Can we trust that actually we do know where we're going and we believe that we will get there and we will keep making that effort if only we can concentrate and really pay attention to it? So I'll stop there. Any comments, questions? Peter? too big to keep us focused.

[41:15]

Right, so we shouldn't spin our wheels, right? And sometimes you have to get out and put the board into the wheel, and sometimes there's things you have to do to regain the traction, but then you have to come back. Yeah, maybe we need chains. I think that was another ancient religious practice. We could all wear chains, you know. It reminded me of when I was learning And there's all these different kind of contrapuntal parts. It's very much like percussion instruments. And each drum has its own line. The way they interlock, it creates new lines. And I was having a lot of trouble with that because I was just focusing on my part, trying to play it right. And what I learned to do was to so that I would hear part of a line and then where I fit into that. And I really, I still can't do it unless I listen to the whole and there's a sense of sort of opening out and feeling contained by all of that and supported and moving along.

[42:28]

My friend, I remember when I was in a band in the early 80s with my friend Sandy, he was explaining, who was a great theorist of bluegrass music, he was explaining in a bluegrass band, every person needs to be carrying the time themselves. Each person has to hold it and know really where it is, and at the same time you're listening, adjusting. And I think that that's the way it is in some strange way here in this room. This is why we sit together. you know, instead of in caves, which is another tradition. We're doing this all together in the same way that some traditions when they do walking meditation, everybody goes and walks in their own direction at their own pace. We walk as one organism, kind of like a millipede, but not in lockstep. My whole body was relating to you in an intimate way.

[43:51]

In a way, I think it gave my mind enough to do. That there were these things to hold, and I didn't wander off into something else. Ajahn Timisore teaches concentration on the breath, and the analogy he uses is, he says, if you want to get If you're out in wildlife and you want to get pictures of wildlife, you just stay at the waterhole. And everything comes and goes at some point if you just stay still at the waterhole. And so staying with the breath is, in his teaching, the equivalent of staying at the waterhole. The distractions come and go. Everything comes through. Yeah, that's good. Well, thank you very much. Beings are numberless.

[44:48]

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